


Shadow My Bones

by Cloudnine101



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Abuse, Character Study, Falling In Love, Forgiveness, Love, M/M, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 05:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2840060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudnine101/pseuds/Cloudnine101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Agent Q is a mystery: the man with no name, hazel eyes glinting in the candlelight, reaching for his hand across the table.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow My Bones

Bond never quite knows Q. Just when he thinks he's found everything, something new appears; an aspect of his personality he's never approached, never even thought about. Figuring out the quartermaster is impossible - taking his measure equally so. Agent Q is a mystery: the man with no name, hazel eyes glinting in the candlelight, reaching for his hand across the table.

 

~

 

The restaurant is humming; buzzing with people. Occasionally, James picks out words orphrases, grasping at threads of conversation.

"Did you hear about..."

"I could have sworn..."

 "She would never have..."

In the dim light, the man smiles, dabbing at the edges of his lips with a napkin - and suddenly, the restaurant doesn't matter any more, because his eyes have consumed it.

 

~

 

The first time, it comes through his headpiece: four words that change everything, and send his world spiralling out of control; not that he knows it at the time. Panting with exertion, sweating beneath the sweltering midday sun, 007 coughs in the dust. Breaking into a jog, he scans the market place, fit to bursting with people: crowding and pushing and shoving, hawking their wares and eager to profit.

But there is no target.

"Q," he muttered, eyes flying, searching faces, "I can't see him."

No cool, calm voice in his ear - nothing to tether him to the outside world.

"Q," he tries again, voice strained, "Where are you?" The agent's only answer is the blare static. Panic begins to mount in his chest. There is no target, no papers - and no Q. No Q. Q.

"Bond, he's on your left. Six o'clock." Exhaling, 007 pulls out his gun. This, at least, is the norm.

"Respond a little quicker next time, will you?" If there is a next time.

"I'll always be here."

 

~

 

Bond shoots the target between the eyes, and looks away as he crumples.

He leaves the bloodstained gun on Q's desk, and never sees it again.

 

~

 

Agent Q is an enigma; a puzzle-box with no solution, so much like life itself that it hurts. It's hard to imagine him as a little boy, or even as a younger man. But one day, Bond knows, Q will grow old - he will grey, and he will wither, and he will be safe and secure and strong. He'll have a family, one day - when James is in the ground in some foreign field, with a bullet hole in his chest. Even when he's gone, Q will exist independently without him. It's a difficult thought to conquer.

 

~

 

They've been skirting around this for months; Q, smirking and laughing and sipping his tea, visible only out of the corner of Bond's eyes; James, following like the lovesick fool he is. He'd consider it pathetic, if it was anyone else.

"Bond, what are you doing?" Q draws his head up, standing very straight, very still - a professional to the last, despite the shaking in his hands as he rubs out the creases in his trousers. There's always a tell.

Bond smiles, placing his hands on Q's hips, fingers digging in - and here, there's no need for social niceties, no need to make the mark feel loved or wanted, no need for anything but this - this moment, as Bond arches again st Q's body, lips leaving patterns on his pale throat.

"This is highly unprofessional, 00...oh..." And Q's words blur into indistinct noises, and his mouth opens, and James moves ever closer, their bodies rubbing together - and skin touches skin, forcefully - and hands are on Bond's back, fingers grasping at the material of his suit-jacket.

With one last kiss to the line of his collar-bone, Bond walks away.

His own fingers tremble.

 

~

 

Q is the man without a name; the face at the side of the picture, that nobody recognises, paling into non-existence. Q smiles, one lip rising higher than the other, and murmurs: "They always did forget me at Christmas." Bond wraps an arm around his waist, and draws him in, until they're standing face to face. In his chest, his fragile heart pounds. "Do you do this often, Mr Bond?"

"Not with you," James says, and kisses him.

 

~

 

It was never going to be stable - not with them. James Bond was never going to sit down by the fire in the evenings, and have Q make him tea (just the way he likes - no sugar, a mere dash of milk), and put his feet up on the couch.

Instead, he has Q pressed up against the counter, anger and scotch blazing through his body, with a hand over his heart - and it pounds, it pounds in time to James's own, bursting through, passing into the sunlight.

Q staggers back, clutching it. "Get out," he says, and James does.

They were never going to have stable, anyway.

 

~

 

Bond goes to a country he's not at liberty to name, and goes into a bar he can't mention, and buys the daughter of a mob-boss a drink. He takes her to a hotel room, and runs his hands over her figure (too many curves, not enough angles), and pretends to feel anything at all.

He goes home with the information, and hands it into Mallory (he won't think of him as M), and returns to the apartment. The lights are low - Q's head rests on the back of the couch, bruises staining his chest, a cup of tea and a glass of wine at his elbow.

James carries him to bed, as Q buries his face in the crook of his neck, and allows the guilt to consume him.

 

~

 

Things are never quite the same, after that - but things are meant to change, and Bond changes with them. They go to the theatre, and they go to the park, and they go dancing - their bodies rolling together, smooth as waves on the sea shore - and at night, Bond bends over him, pressing him into the mattress, and says that he's sorry without any words.

Q seems to forgive him, but James can't be sure.

 

~

 

James gets shot. Again.

He goes to hospital, and he watches the lights swim above him.

When he wakes, Q's at his elbow, face pale and drawn. "Bloody stupid bastard," he says, and kisses him senseless.

It's not forgiveness, but it's as close as Bond's going to get.

 

~

 

They go driving, and drinking, and diving - half-in and half-out of water, bobbing beneath the surface, fabric translucent in the moonlight. Q's hair sticks to his forehead, and his skin is like ice. Bond wraps warm arms around him, and kicks, and they merge together - and, in the darkness, Bond can't tell where he ends and Q begins.

 

~

 

"I love you," he tells Q, "I love you."

And Q holds him, and draws him close, and whispers a word in his ear, tinged with candlelight.

(The nameless man is nameless no longer.)


End file.
